Staying On Top(19)

It could be that nothing had changed, because no matter her protests, the attraction between us couldn’t be one-sided. She felt it, and I felt it. Maybe she had gotten tired of fighting it.

Maybe. But she showed up out of nowhere, claimed to be the daughter of my accountant and that she wanted to help me. My unwillingness to let her go without me had been met with . . . flirtation. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t trust it.

Instead of overthinking it, I followed her swaying hips down the hotel stairs—all twenty flights of them—and into a cab. A cab. I couldn’t remember the last time a car hadn’t been waiting for me, but according to Blair’s assessment of her father’s reach, the flying-under-the-radar plan was necessary. If we used our connections, he would know.

And this was only the beginning. We were flying coach all the way to fucking Austria.

It had been a long time since no one had waited on me hand and foot, but that wasn’t even my biggest concern—it was the germs. It wasn’t my manliest quality, and I didn’t share my issue with many people because it was a bigger problem than I liked to admit, but they freaked me out. And I was pretty sure I was the only guy on the tennis tour with a full-fledged plan for the zombie apocalypse.

Because it was going to happen. It was only a matter of time before germs adapted further and turned on us, the microscopic little hellbeasts, and we were all brain-rotted zombies. I didn’t want to think about how many of them lived on commercial airlines or were currently trying to find a way through my pants in the cab.

“Why are you making that face?” Blair asked, watching me with a mixture of amusement and concern from her side of the taxi.

I stared at her legs, half turned on and half horrified that her bare skin was touching the cracked black leather that had been touched by countless other bare legs. It wasn’t an incapacitating obsessive-compulsive fear of germs, but I went out of my way to avoid certain things. And, fine, the incapacitating level of my problem might not be far off.

Blair didn’t need to know my secrets, or weaknesses. It made me uncomfortable enough that she’d read my face with such ease. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

“You know, if taking a taxi bothers you this much, this is going to be one long trek.”

“Maybe we’ll find him in Austria.”

“You have no idea how badly I’m hoping that’s the case.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re sitting in the middle on the flight, by the way.”

We lapsed back into silence when I didn’t argue with her. Arguing could turn into a full-time job with the two of us, and I had no interest in a nine-to-five. I had a bag full of sleeping aids in the shape of pills. She’ll be sorry she didn’t give me the window when I pass out on her lap and leave a drool puddle between her legs.

No. Do not think about anything between her legs.

“The taxi doesn’t bother me.”

She gave me a look that said she didn’t buy my protest but was already tired of arguing with me, too. I had no idea how she read me like that—we hadn’t spent hardly any time together and I had no idea what she was thinking. Ever.

My phone buzzed with a text message from my cousin Melody, asking if she could come spend Christmas with me. I replied with an excited yes; it would be nice to not be alone on the holiday for the first time in years. Then a message came in from Leo, wanting to know where in the hell I’d gotten off to, and I had to break the news that I was leaving the country for an undetermined amount of time.

There was no way Blair could miss the angry buzzing of my phone created by his flurry of pissed-off protests, and I caught her eyebrow raised in between my hurried responses. “You’re not the only one who’s less than thrilled about my decision to blow off a few days of training.”

“You know—”

“Save your breath.”

Once we checked our bags and went through security, we settled at a table in the airport Starbucks without discussing it. Blair ordered a black coffee and stirred in cinnamon, vanilla, and Splenda. I ordered a decaffeinated tea.

“Okay, so now that I’ve proven my willingness to follow blindly and we can’t possibly be overheard by anyone who cares, Miss Paranoid, how about you share a little bit about where we might be going on this little impromptu adventure.”

I still wasn’t convinced this would end up doing me any good. Even if we did find Neil, why would he give me my money back? What if he was more of a badass con man than a weaselly one and tried to, like, get rid of me or something?

Part of me wanted to forget the thirty mil and nurse my wounds in Australia, make sure my body was ready for the season in six weeks, and focus on replacing what had been stolen.